Month: July 1995

The Papua New Guinea High Commissioner, Sir Frederick Reiher, put a very forthright view that Australia has been heavy-handed, remote and unsympathetic to his county in its time of need. He was referring to Australia’s rejection of a recent request for $100 million bridging finance. The Australian Government offered $20 million immediately and a further $20 million on conditions.

Sir Frederick’s assertions went wider than that incident. In condensed form his argument is that Australia should not treat PNG as naughty boys not to be trusted with block grants; that Australia left PNG in the lurch at independence time two decades ago; that PNG helped save Australia during the war; that Australian companies take large amounts of profit out of PNG; and that it is in Australia’s interest to have a politically stable PNG so Australia should help PNG economically to ensure that. That is one way of looking at it.
Continue reading “1995_07_july_leader08jul”

Less than $20 is a small price to pay for a family’s lives. That is the clear message from a couple of incidents in Canberra in the past week when smoke alarms saved two families in separate fires. In one the family’s house was extensively damaged by the people got out in time. In the other the occupants were awakened by the alarm and saved themselves and their dwelling.

Residential smoke alarms do not require electrical wiring or any cutting of existing ceilings or walls. Nor are they expensive. They run from normal AA batteries and are attached with peel-off-and-stick strips. They are very cheap and easily tested. The Fire Brigade will help if necessary. Human’s sense of smell is cut off during sleep so the smell of smoke will not wake someone. It requires noise.
Continue reading “1995_07_july_leader08jua”

John Howard is a politician in touch. He is in touch with the views of some red-necks who call in to the worst talk-back radio shows. He does not appear to be in touch with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander opinion, nor the opinion of the bulk of mainstream Australia on the question of official recognition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags.

The objection raised by Mr Howard is that the recognition is a “divisive gesture”. Nonsense. Only those people already irrationally ill-disposed to indigenous aspirations are going to find offence in giving recognition to the flags. In the short term it might add a tad of bitterness to a few people who are already embittered. That is a very small price to pay for the enhanced self-esteem the move will give to indigenous people and the value to both indigenous and non-indigenous people from the act of reconciliation.

Tragically, some of that value has been eroded by Mr Howard’s comments. He must carry most of the blame for that. But some of the blame must go to the Government. It did not consult with the other political parties or with the states and territories. Rather it used executive power under the Flags Act to proclaim the two indigenous flags as flags of Australia.

It would have been better for the Parliament to have adopted the flags in legislation. It would have given the Opposition a chance to gauge opinion and would probably have resulted in a better approach. A quick change to the regulations by the Government, however, was bound to result in knee-jerk reactions. The point about a legislative approach is that it can only be undone by legislation. The regulation can be undone by ministerial action. The Australian Flag and the Red Ensign are recognised in the Act itself and cannot be changed by ministerial decree _ only by consent of the Parliament.

If anything, Mr Howard should have objected to the way the recognition was given, not to the fact of it. He should have argued that the two indigenous flags required legislative status like the Australian flag.

In any event it is sad that what should have been a united recognition of the flags has become the subject of petty party politics.

The two indigenous flags deserve recognition. They are both Australian. They both represent significant, identifiably parts of Australian society in the same way as a state or territory, albeit ones with a heritage rather than geographic base. The Aboriginal flag and to a lesser extent the Torres Strait Islander flag are instantly recognisable and acknowledged. It is better to include and incorporate them into mainstream Australian society legally as well as in fact.

Indeed, there may be some secret jealousy among those who oppose legal recognition of the flags. The flags are not only flown, but also worn, with pride among Aboriginal and Torres Islanders and universally accepted by them, in a way that the Australian flag does not enjoy. A large number of Australians see the Union Jack _ which takes a quarter of the flag _ as no longer relevant, unrepresentative or an unsuitable symbol of Australian nationhood. Others view the present flag with enormous pride.

There is some justification to the assertion by Irish republicans that Britain is guilty of double standards in releasing convicted murderer Private Lee Clegg yet not releasing republicans caught up in the 16 years of violence in Northern Ireland. Clegg was released after two years of a life term for shooting a joy-rider in a stolen car speeding through a west Belfast war zone. Prime Minister John Major has asserted that Clegg’s case is different because it was not an “intentional” murder. That view is debatable, and, after all, Clegg was convicted of murder which requires if not a premeditated intention to kill, at least a reckless indifference to human life or an intention to commit grievous bodily harm.

In any event, it is not helpful to engage in artificial comparisons of individual culpability in a situation like that in Northern Ireland. The sad truth is that many young people _ soldiers and Catholic and Protestant militants _ were caught up in, or even born, into a cycle of violence that mitigates individual culpability even if it does not excuse it. Sure, some of those convicted are the sort of thug who would engage in thuggery in any society, but many of those convicted of violence might well have led blameless lives if brought up in a different country.
Continue reading “1995_07_july_leader06jul”

The terms of reference for the inquiry into the ACT’s leasehold system should be wide enough to satisfy all parties involved in the ACT’s lease and planning system. It is important for public confidence to be restored in the system of land tenure and planning in the ACT. That has not been evident for some time. The inquiry will be a chance to see what has gone wrong in the past and what might be done in the future.

When a new federal capital of Australia was originally propounded, as a compromise between the competing claims of Sydney and Melbourne, some principles of land tenure were established with the aim of preventing land speculation.

The capital territory was to be large enough to prevent people buying up the land to sell at windfall profits and all the land was to be vested in the Commonwealth, which meant leasehold was to be the highest form of land tenure. The aim was to ensure that windfall profits were not made by changes to land use as the population grew.
Continue reading “1995_07_july_leader05jul”

A won its World Court case on East Timor on a legal technicality. The underlying moral question of the Timor Gap treaty and Australia’s recognition of Indonesian sovereignty over East Timor remains unaddressed. Portugal brought the case against Australia, saying that Australia’s signing of the Timor Gap treaty would result in an illegal exploitation of oil and other resources which properly remain the property of the East Timorese people and was contrary to UN resolutions that East Timor is a non-self-governing territory and the East Timorese should have an act of self-determination.

The court ruled 14-2 that to rule on Portugal’s case against Australia would require the determination of questions about the Indonesian invasion and annexation of East Timor in 1975. That would necessitate making judgment about Indonesia. The court said it could not do that without Indonesia appearing before it and submitting itself to the World Court’s jurisdiction.
Continue reading “1995_07_july_leader03jul”

The clinical school at Woden Valley Hospital is not out of the woods yet. At the end of the Health Ministers’ conference in Alice Springs in the middle of last month, the clear impression was the Federal Government would put on hold for a year its plan to cut the number of medical graduates from 1200 a year to 1000. It meant that Sydney University would therefore be able to continue servicing the 30 places at Woden. It now appears that that is not the case. The Federal Government is to press ahead with its plans while a committee looks at doctor supply. The political fall-out has been a spat between the Federal Health Minister Carmen Lawrence and her ACT counterpart Kate Carnell. They have traded accusations about who said what to whom and when and what were the precise terms of the agreement between the state and federal ministers. The head of the ACT’s Department of the Health, Greg Fraser, and the South Australian Minister, Michael Armitage, say they got the impression that the plan to cut back graduates was on hold for a year. Dr Lawrence says to the contrary. Dr Lawrence allowed the impression that the cuts were off for a year to remain with the public for two weeks before putting her interpretation.

The spat aside, it seems pointless and silly to review an issue when the Federal Government is pushing ahead with its conclusion anyway. The real issues are whether cutting back medical graduates will benefit health care in Australia or even achieve its stated aim of cutting Medicare costs and what effect will cutting back medical schools have on smaller schools, in particular the ACT clinical school.
Continue reading “1995_07_july_leader01jul”

Henry George still has a following in Australia. Every so often letters to the editor come in marked “The Henry George League”. Another prolific letter writer, Bill Mason, wrote Georgist theories, but never attributed them.George founded the San Francisco Daily Evening Post which folded in the 1870s depression. It inspired him to write Progress and Poverty published in 1879. Because of its history, his theories still have some relevance in Canberra, especially in light of the new inquiry into land tenure.

George argued that the raw value of land rose because of the growth of the economy in general, not through individual effort. Idle landowners were reaping the benefit of other people’s toil and therefore the state should tax the whole of the increase in unimproved value.

Such a tax would reap such a large amount that no other tax would be necessary. This would stimulate construction and economic growth and be administratively simple to apply.
Continue reading “1995_07_july_george13”

Martin Ferguson’s move to the “”feral govment in Cambra”, the plight of the “fat bloke from WA” (as he was so succinctly identified in a recent opinion poll), the Queensland election and the fate of Janine Haines show how poorly we are served by the electoral system.

Kim Beazley is much more likely to lose his seat in the next election than a dozen or more drones in the Labor and Liberal Parties.

Members with talent often find themselves in marginal seats and get swept aside with the slightest swing against their party, while drones in safe seats get returned. Aside from being unfair, it means that an incoming Opposition has to regroup from the drones in safe seats while its best talent has been voted out.
Continue reading “1995_07_july_column25jul”

Our school soccer referee brought an unorthodox sense of balance to friendly matches. If one side got too far ahead, he joined in, taking possession of the ball, racing up the field and passing to a player near the goal, his referee’s whistle silent in his mouth as the clearly off-side receiving player dropped the ball into the goal.

The other extreme is totally unrefereed games _ like backyard cricket. Unrefereed games are fine if the rules, otherwise they degenerate into boycotts and violence.

So to is Westminster politics. Suddenly something unexpected happens and someone says it is “”tippity runs” or “”over the fence is six and out”. Pandemonium breaks out.
Continue reading “1995_07_july_column18jul”